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Secret Adventurers Club

The previous evening, after Dr. Troy had turned up at the orphanage with the missing inmates, Maisie had put down in the log how Dr. Troy had taken the children for a picnic and simply forgotten the time. It was useful to have someone like Dr. Troy owing you a favour.

It took an effort of will to climb the sandstone steps to the shiny black door. Tukiko hoped Silja would be there, it would be less awkward if Silja was there. Silja, it turned out, wasn’t there. The door opened to Tuki’s knock and revealed Kirsten with little Annie peeping out from behind her legs.

The lengthening shadows of early evening helped Tukiko lead the four adventurers away from the noisy crowd half way up the hill and down into bottom of the valley where the shadows were closer together and darker.

Justin’s lips opened to protest but stopped short of any words coming out. Although this left his face looking like a startled guppy, his rodent brain was working overtime. His head turned towards Finny.

The fact that Lonely looked away and murmured that she didn’t know made Tukiko immediately suspicious. She looked again at the far away scene and concentrated on it in a way that was becoming more and more comfortable ever since the birth of Ichiro.

They had been walking for nearly an hour. Onetooth and Worms had stopped crying long ago and now trudged along without complaining, finally accepting the new situation. Casper stared fixedly at Justin… that was his name… at Justin’s boots thrpp-thrpping through the long grass a metre or so in front of him. Finny walked beside Casper, occasionally trying to catch his eye but failing every time.

Finny scrambled backwards to her feet with the gun pointing all the while at the bear in case it suddenly sprang up again. She backed away two or three metres before recognition of a world that was more than just her and the bear began to return. She stopped and her heart began to slow as normal sound came back and she could feel the throbbing stinging in her hands again.

The journey to the buildings took longer than expected. City kids like them didn’t really have experience in judging distances much beyond the corner of the next block. Consequently it was getting on for noon by the time the adventurers walked slowly up to the hole in the railing topped stone wall that surrounded the whatever it was.

On hearing the familiar shouted command of adult authority the four adventurers immediately went into kid 101 – automatic instant denial. They spun around as one and with all wearing the same look of surprised innocence and the words ‘it wasn’t me’ waiting ready in their throats. Clubs and sticks, and in Finny’s case the elderly long barrelled .45 calibre revolver, disappeared behind backs.

Lack of rainfall over the last couple of weeks had reduced the flow in the sewer’s central trough to a slow meander of thick, smelly, oily water. The slime on the walls, instead of being slick and oozing, now resembled a dried out field of giant brown, elbow scabs which broke away in clouds of dusty organic particles as all four kids paused to draw patterns and crude pictures with their sticks.

So Saturday morning came around. Breakfasts were successfully filched away between slices of bread and stuffed under shirts. Finny left almost immediately and the boys looked at each other still not quite sure if she was joking or not about the gun.

And so it went on for most of the day until everyone started getting tired. Soon, tiredness and the heat started making everyone cranky. By mid-afternoon ‘Attack the Flag’ was losing its appeal and kids started to wander off in search of shade and water. Not long after, the game fizzled out and Finny and co were left to lick their wounds.

There was no way Finny was going to make it to the mound of debris. She was already bloody and her breath burned in her throat as her lungs and heart worked overtime to supply her body with the energy it needed to reach safety. Like Casper, Onetooth and Worms behind her, Finny knew she was going to die, torn apart by bullets coming from the hidden shooters who had ambushed them.

The scent of Nervous and Fear hit Abyss’s nose as soon as crossed the yellow tape, and stepped into the building. A scuff here and a muffled noise there confirmed he was not alone in the building. The old lady had said it would be a cake walk, and he just had to get in to find the object hidden in the safe.

Before going through the curiously inviting door to ‘Lucy’s Special Place’, and all the possible treasures it might contain, Finny had the little gang collect together everything they had scavenged so far. It was a lot. Even without the pile of brightly coloured and exotic ladies’ clothing Onetooth and Worms had put together it was still a lot for a bunch of seven and eight year olds to carry all the way back to Badger Court. Finny sought a solution.

The next two rooms proved to be drearily similar to the first. Even more so in one case when Finny’s searching fingers found an over full pisspot. She dried her hand on the far from clean sheet and retreated to the balcony, leaving Casper to finish digging through the room’s contents.

The kitchen had been trashed, of course, but it’s much harder to destroy stainless steel units and mixers than it is old wooden tables and chairs. And these were even pre-fall so we are looking at durable here. But it wasn’t the general state of the kitchen décor that made the kids halt their headlong rush to claim any left-over booty.

What hit Finny as she stepped through the door from the ruined office into the equally ruined main room of the bar was the overpowering stink of alcohol. Its unpleasant smell made her want to gag and Finny immediately wondered if you could just get drunk from the smell.

Finny knew the name. She knew the name because she had made a habit of reading whatever was on Joe Spivey’s desk at the factory. She knew that Joe had recently bought some ‘Decorative Beer Pumps’ and some ‘Furniture; various’ and some ‘Kitchenware; Mis-cell-an-eous (she’d had to look that one up)’. She knew also that these and other items were now either in, or on their way to Joe’s warehouse on Verde Street.

Worms led them a fast paced and zig-zagging route through the back streets of New Flagstaff, making them wait in a tight huddle at corners until Union patrols were looking the other way and generally being all very ninjery about the whole journey. Not that it was really necessary but it did avoid much chance of their location being reported back to the orphanage by an over concerned busy-body.

It was just after lunch. Finny still had the watch Joe had given her so, she alone amongst the four of them, knew that it was… She counted the ‘5s’… Twenty five minutes past one. She was still getting used to mechanical time, but Joe had insisted, so that was that. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy making the time in her head fit with the little numbers on the thing on her wrist. In her head it was ‘feeling better after dinner’ time.